Christian Wolff was born in 1934 in Nice, France. He's lived mostly in the
U.S. since 1941. He studied piano with Grete Sultan and composition,
briefly, with John Cage. Though mostly self-taught as a composer, the
work of John Cage, Morton Feldman, David Tudor and Earle Brown have
been important to him, as well as long associations with Cornelius Cardew
and Frederic Rzewski. A particular feature of his music is the various
freedoms it allows performers at the time of performance as well as the
variable results possible for any one particular piece, for which various
new notations have been invented. Underlying notions in the work are
shared freedom, self-determination and democratically-spirited
collaboration. The music is published by C.F. Peters, New York and much
of it is recorded, on many labels. A number of pieces, starting in 1953,
have been used and commissioned by Merce Cunningham and his dance
company. Wolff has been active as a performer and as improvisor - with
Takehisa Kosugi, Steve Lacey, Christian Marclay, Keith Rowe, William
Winant, the group AMM, Kui Dong and Larry Polansky. His writings on
music (up to 1998) are collected in "Cues: Writings and Conversations",
published by MusikTexte, Cologne. He has received awards and grants
from the American Academy and National Institute of Arts and Letters,
the Ford Foundation, DAAD Berlin, the Asian Cultural Council, the Fromm
Foundation, the Foundation for Contemporary Performance Arts (the John
Cage Award for music) and the Mellon Foundation. He is a member of the
Akademie der Kuenste in Berlin and the American Academy of Arts and
Sciences. In 2004 he received an honorary Doctor of Arts degree from
the California Institute of the Arts. Academically trained as a classicist,
Wolff was professor of classics and music at Dartmouth College from
1971 to 1999.